This invention relates to explosive devices that can open an aperture in a solid wall of a structure or a container and form a high-kinetic-energy projectile from the portion of the wall removed to create the aperture. This invention also relates to explosive devices that can generate a projectile without breaching the wall of a structure or a container. The projectile is generated from the opposite side of the wall from the side where the explosive device is detonated.
A number of devices have been patented that can open an aperture in a wall. Applications of such devices include creating an aperture in a container, such as a container for an improvised explosive device (IED). After opening the aperture, a disruptor that is not directly formed by the explosive action of the access tool can subsequently be projected through the opening to disrupt an IED and render it harmless. These devices are designed so that they do not generate a projectile from the wall of the container itself. An expressed goal of various devices is to produce an aperture without forming projectiles from the wall material of the wall being breached.
Honodel (U.S. Pat. No. 4,499,828) concerns a cone-shaped barrier breaching device designed primarily for opening holes in interior walls of buildings. The structure of the device is such that the sequence of detonation as detonation moves down the spokes and into the extensions of the cone results in an air-lens type operation. The structure of the device is such that there are no metallic forms such as found in conventional shaped charges that would result in shrapnel.
Cherry (U.S. Pat. No. 6,220,166) concerns an apparatus for explosively penetrating hardened containers such as steel drums without producing metal fragmentation. The explosive force generated by the explosive device causes the barrier to fail from an initial point and along intersecting failure lines that define a plurality of petals cantilevered from the barrier which are pushed back to define a fragment-free opening in the barrier.
Greene et al. patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,817,297, 6,865,990, and 6,966,263) concern a no-fragment explosive access tool for soft metal containers that uses a flexible material preferably in a mostly square shape. An explosive charge is focused by grooves formed in a cutting plate such that the cutting plate forms a plurality of petals that press into a soft metal container to create a fragment-free opening in the soft metal target material.